1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to language support in data processing systems and in particular to support for complex languages in data processing systems having limited storage resources. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to enabling tier-0 devices to utilize and display bidirectional and DBCS languages.
2. Description of the Related Art
Tier-0 data processing systems, also referred to as xe2x80x9cpalm topxe2x80x9d computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), or personal communications assistants (PCAs) and including, for instance, the xe2x80x9cPalm Pilotxe2x80x9d line of personal digital assistants typically have limited storage resources. Therefore, most existing tier-0 devices provide no support for complex language input due to the large resource requirements for the required dictionaries and fonts.
The Unicode (ISO-10646) character set, as defined by the Unicode Consortium, is finding increasingly widespread implementation, particularly for data intended to be transmitted or distributed over the Internet, such as World Wide Web (WWW) pages. Encoded representations of characters in the Unicode character set are fixed at two bytes in length (double byte characters), with a variable-width encoding known as xe2x80x9cUTF-8xe2x80x9d (8-bit Unicode Transformation Format) available which may vary from one to three bytes in length. Bidirectional languages such as Hebrew, which may be written either from right-to-left or from left-to-right, employ characters which may have a different appearance depending on the direction in which the text is written. Because of the limitations described above, tier-0 devices typically cannot support Unicode character sets or bidirectional languages.
The lack of support for bidirectional and/or double byte character set (DBCS) languages in tier-0 devices is a serious limitation on the usefulness of such devices. Character sets for languages other than the native language of the host system are not supported, which prevents certain data from being utilized or displayed. Some vendors have created specialized national language versions of their products, but this merely requires additional resources for implementation while failing to provide multilingual support.
It would be desirable, therefore, to provide a method and apparatus for supporting bidirectional, DBCS, or other complex languages in a tier-0 device.
It is therefore one object of the present invention to provide an improved method and apparatus for language support in data processing systems.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for supporting complex languages in data processing systems having limited storage resources.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus enabling tier-0 devices to utilize and display bidirectional and DBCS languages.
The foregoing objects are achieved as is now described. Complex languages such as bidirectional or double byte character set (e.g., Unicode) languages are supported in tier-0 devices despite the limited storage resources common for such devices. A phrase dictionary is built within a host data processing system which is capable of communicating with the tier-0 device and which supports complex language input. Commonly used text strings are added to the phrase dictionary utilizing any characters. The contents of tis the phrase dictionary are then transferred, along with sparse font information containing only the glyphs necessary for characters within the phrase dictionary, to the tier-0 device. Since font information for only a subset of all possible characters is stored in the tier-0 device, a much smaller amount of storage resources are consumed. On the tier-0 device, the phrase dictionary is invoked by a user control such as a pop-up, and the desired phrase may then be selected for entry into a data entry field. Additional phrases may be added as needed to the phrase dictionary on the host system and the phrase dictionary within the tier-0 device updated to add the new contents and associated sparse font information, if necessary. Multilingual support is therefore enabled in the tier-0 device with minimal consumption of resources.
The above as well as additional objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent in the following detailed written description.